Much of Shepsle's research has ties to both economics and government, in that it uses economic assumptions and reasoning to study political behavior. This "rational choice" approach to politics allows researchers to create elaborate models of behavior, which rest on certain assumptions that are more commonly linked to economics, such as the assumption that people want to maximize their utility, or the assumption that people are basically rational.

Shepsle says that economics and government overlap in other ways as well, and that he and government professors Morris P. Fiorina and James E. Alt hope "to energize a community in political economy, and to create an institutional manifestation of this overlap between the disciplines."

But for the most part, Shepsle plans to spend the next year "walking the halls and climbing the stairs"--meeting his colleagues and graduate students, attending and organizing seminars, and doing networking of a sort. "There are pockets of excellence in my area all over the place at Harvard," he says. "I have to do some cartography, and draw the map of where these people are."

Shepsle says he will also probably spend more time teaching and meeting students this year than usual. He says he has already seen quite a bit of interaction between faculty and graduate students--"people seem to have found the smallest excuses to stand around and have wine and cheese for a couple of hours."

Shepsle acknowledges that taking the time to familiarize himself with Harvard and what it offers will take away somewhat from his research time this year, but he plans to be here long enough to make up for it--"the expectation when you come is that you're planning a 30-year career," he says.

"I would not want to say anything about Ken without being irreverent, because the fact is, he's just getting too much praise," quips Shepsle's former colleague Salisbury. "In all likelihood, now that he's left Washington University, he won't do anything else of much significance."

When Shepsle isn't theorizing about how government works or testing whether or not he's right, he says he enjoys spending time with his two children, reading mystery novels and following Atlantic Coast Conference basketball. "My wife complains that I don't have any of what she considers hobbies, but I've determined that the definition of hobby is something that costs a lot of money and has no instrumental purpose," he says.